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As part of the Climate Stress in Syria-research project, there was a closed interactive online workshop on October 14th to discuss the nexus around drought, vulnerability and conflict. This post describes the workshop that was held online on October 14th, 2020, as the first workshop in the Climate Stress Syria project. It was co-written by Cecilia Axelsson Örberg, Pinar Dinc and Lina Eklund who we

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/exploring-broader-field-environmental-dimensions-conflict-middle-east-region-and-beyond - 2025-12-31

Ten non-Armenians from ten European countries write about their interest in and experiences of Armenia. In moving and, at times, funny essays they depict dramatic events, lasting friendships, political struggles. We hear about lavash and brandy, genocide and revival, Yerevan and small God-forgotten villages in Hayastan and Artsakh.  The authors describe how their interest in Armenia started, how i

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-svante-lundgren-one-editors-new-book-armenia-mon-amour-ten-europeans-speak - 2025-12-31

CMES Spyros Sofos was awarded a PhD in Regional and Cross-cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen after the examination of his thesis entitled “The Meanings of the People in Turkish Politics: A Genealogy” on Monday 7 December. This thesis is intended to make a contribution to ongoing efforts to enhance our understanding of the “popular” in the study of politics through a critical examinat

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/new-phd-thesis-meanings-people-turkish-politics-genealogy - 2025-12-31

Local weather often is not what news reports for cities and counties. As transient, local, and intense as a cloudburst, rainfall can be highly variable, impractical to measure for usual rain-gauge networks. Frequent extreme events with climate change call for fundamental knowledge developments on rainfall. With the new X-band weather radars initially installed to avoid urban flooding, high-resolut

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-hasan-hosseini-has-got-pre-seed-funding-2021-lu-innovation - 2025-12-31

The article has been published in Sustainability and is available online. Co-writers are Khaldoon A. Mourad and Hasan Hosseini, also from CMES. Farmers know much more than we think, and they are keen to improve their knowledge in order to improve their farms and increase their income. On the other hand, decision-makers, organizations, and researchers are increasing their use of citizen volunteers

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/role-citizen-science-sustainable-agriculture-new-article-cmes-helen-avery - 2025-12-31

Co-writer Lisen Dellenborg. The article is published in the book "FEMALE GENITAL CUTTING The Global North and South" (Malmö University). Open access. In recent decades, female genital mutilation has come to be regarded as a major breach of human rights. International anti-FGM agencies such as WHO, UNICEF and The Red Cross/Red Crescent have drawn up strongly worded documents designed to protect wom

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-maria-frederika-malmstroms-new-article-female-circumcisiongenital-mutilation-and-human-rights - 2025-12-31

It is during a difficult time that Akiça Bahri has taken over the responsibility as Minister of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries in Tunisia. But with a doctorate in water management from Lund University and many international missions on her CV, she was ready for the assignment. Since 2011 and the start of the Arab Spring, leading politicians in Tunisia have been trying to persuade Akiça

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/lu-doctor-water-focus-and-cmes-connections-new-minister-tunisia - 2025-12-31

Middle Eastern research news from Lund University Message from the director Seasonal greetings from the team at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies  This has been a strange and challenging year. We have just closed down the Centre temporarily due to escalating Covid-19 pandemic.  However, in 2021 we hope to be moving towards brighter times! CMES is set to launch some new initiatives to consolida

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/middle-east-forum-newsletter-16-december-2020 - 2025-12-31

The majority of the new dust sources are due to environmental degradation caused by human activities. To prevent further dust source generation, the first step is to identify the new dust sources and predict the dust source occurrences in the vulnerable areas. We developed a novel approach that combines machine learning algorithms and remote sensing techniques for dust source detection and suscept

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/new-cmes-research-about-dust-source-detection-and-dust-source-susceptibility-mapping - 2025-12-31

Funding agency: EU Horizon 2020. Duration: 2018-2021 FASTER is a collaboration between CMES Lund University, CREAF (Barcelona University), INRGREF and associated research centres (IRESA, AVFA) in Tunisia, and companies EFB and Vision.  The project is structured into five work packages and amounting to 1 million €, including: coordination; capacity building through training and staff exchanges; liv

https://www.cmes.lu.se/strategic-research-area-middle-east/research-projects/faster-farmers-adaptation-sustainability-tunisia-through-excellence-research - 2025-12-31

Funding agencies: European Commission and Erasmus+ CBHE. Duration: 2018-2021 This project aims at capacity building on the use of spatial data infrastructures and underlaying technologies to improve environmental management in the Middle East. Spatial focus is on Yemen which is facing several issues in the region. Climate change, misuse of environmental resources (e.g., overuse of groundwater) and

https://www.cmes.lu.se/strategic-research-area-middle-east/research-projects/emme-environmental-management-middle-east - 2025-12-31

Duration: 2020-ongoing This project aims to foster collaboration between academics in Sweden and scholars from Turkey whose academic freedoms are implicitly or explicitly curtailed and violated. Over the past years, there has been a severe restriction of academic freedoms in Turkey. Academics have been dismissed, imprisoned, suffered administrative penalties, and been forced to operate within an a

https://www.cmes.lu.se/cmes-research/research-projects/turkey-beyond-borders-critical-voices-new-perspectives - 2025-12-31

This study identifies obstacles and barriers in distance learning and the use of electronic exams, comparing them to pursue success in the distance education system during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). It also aimed to determine the similarity and differences between the two main components of distance education. This is based on a sample of evaluations from professors and students at unive

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/obstacles-distance-learning-and-applying-electronic-exams-during-covid-19-new-cmes-research - 2025-12-31

The demand for water supply is continuously rising due to population growth and development across the world. In arid and semi-arid areas, particularly the Middle East, aquifers form the central freshwater reserves, hence are being uncontrollably exploited to meet water demand for an ever-increasing population and industrialization. To achieve sustainability in groundwater supply, the potential of

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/application-advanced-machine-learning-algorithms-assess-groundwater-potential-using-remote-sensing - 2025-12-31

Groundwater resources provide a large share of the world’s water demand for various sectors such as agriculture, industry, and drinking water. Particularly in the Middle East's arid and semi-arid regions, with surface water scarcity and high evaporation, groundwater is a valuable commodity. Yet, groundwater data are often incomplete or nonexistent. Therefore, it is a challenge to achieve a groundw

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/application-extreme-gradient-boosting-and-parallel-random-forest-algorithms-assessing-groundwater - 2025-12-31

In this article CMES Spyros A. Sofos and Nazanin Shahrokni present a case analysis of Sahar Khodayari’s transformation into a global injustice icon, the #BlueGirl, after she set herself ablaze outside a courthouse in Tehran, Iran, allegedly in protest against the ban on women entering football stadiums. We focus on the ways in which ‘pity’ was generated, mobilized, and transformed into indignation

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/mobilizing-pity-dialectics-narrative-production-and-erasure-case-irans-bluegirl - 2025-12-31

The present article by CMES Orwa Ajjoub provides a thematic analysis of Hadid’s essay titled “Between Chechnya and al-Sham … Lessons and Examples: A Brief Political Study of the Chechen Experience and the Future of al-Sham,” which was published on the AQ-affiliated website Bayan in July 2020. In his recent article for Jihadica, Aaron Zelin proposed the emergence of a tripolar jihadi world consisti

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/reading-kadyrov-al-sham-adnan-hadid-chechnya-syria-and-al-qaidas-strategic-failure - 2025-12-31

CMES Helen Avery has published a chapter (together with Birgitta Nordén) in the book "Universities, Sustainability and Society: Supporting the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals". Urgent structural change is required in higher education to allow collaboration both within and across universities so that achieving a rapid sustainability transition can become the overarching and main

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/we-can-only-do-it-together-addressing-global-sustainability-challenges-through-collaborative - 2025-12-31

Watch Rola El-Husseini give a talk on her current research project at the Winter doctoral school of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha.  "Theorizing Gender and the Sectarian State: Evidence from Iraq and Lebanon."  (a film on Youtube) Winter doctoral school of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, Qatar The objective of the winter school/program is to provid

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/theorizing-gender-and-sectarian-state-evidence-iraq-and-lebanon - 2025-12-31

Land use planning and erosion control through Laos suitability modeling. Land use planning and erosion control are two of the Laotian Authority's National Agriculture and Forest Research Institute's (NAFRI) core operations, for which long-term campaigns have been launched to improve the efficiency of agriculture and forestry, and to introduce new methods and crops or tree species. This activity ha

https://www.nateko.lu.se/mapping-land-use-laos-0 - 2025-12-31